Coast (2005) s07e03 Episode Script

Coast is home.
And we're exploring the most endlessly fascinating shoreline in the world, our own.
The journey to discover surprising, secret stories from around the British lsles continues.
This is Coast.
(Gulls cry) The sea is a great global highway.
As an island people, it's in our nature to reach out and explore.
The thrill of embarking on voyages, big and small, makes our harbours hum with excitement.
ln an age before air travel, these were our departure lounges.
Harbours have always been gateways to adventure.
With an insatiable appetite for those adventures, we've constructed around 1,000 of these global gateways.
For centuries, people, goods and ideas have flowed in between harbour walls.
lf only these walls could talk.
Well, now they can.
We're here to reveal Down on the south coast, Tessa is exploring how, in the harbours of the Royal Navy, a fashion began that made a permanent mark on Britain.
There's one naval tradition that remains largely hidden from public view, beneath sailors' uniforms.
The tattoo.
NlCK: On the coast of Northern lreland, we're heading to Portrush, where Mark Horton's disembarking to take a trip four centuries back in time.
How did the lack of a harbour lead to the ruin of a remarkable town? Lost under the soil like an lrish Pompeii.
The decision to settle here at the castle, rather than at the port over there, was a matter of life and death for the new town.
NlCK: And we venture northwards in England.
ln the docks at Barrow-in-Furness, Dick discovers a top-secret weapon of the First World War, airships pumped up with cow guts.
lt seems incredible, but cow guts were the secret ingredients that meant that airships could float in the sky.
l think this is practically ready to fly.
NlCK: The harbour l'm heading for is Newlyn in Cornwall.
Soaring high above the Cornish coast, it's striking how perfectly people have moulded themselves into the landscape.
Man-made walls extend natural headlands to create safe havens, harbours, our own perfectly formed contributions to the coast.
ln Newlyn town l was bred and born But the harbour also hides a hidden history.
1 50 years ago, as tin mines were closing, fishing struggled to keep the community going.
Down in the harbour, a new call was luring the men seawards.
On the other side of the world, a gold rush had begun.
To South Australia we are borne Heave away, all the way South Australia, round Cape Horn We're bound for South Australia NlCK: The fishermen of Newlyn knew that 1 2,000 miles of wild sea stood between them and the Promised Land.
Who would risk all for riches? 1 50 years ago, one little fishing boat made a remarkable voyage from here to the other side of the world.
Have a look at this picture.
lt shows Melbourne harbour in Australia absolutely crammed with shipping in the mid-1 800s.
But look at this little boat here.
lt's got a sail on it, and on the sail it says Penzance.
lt's a boat called Mystery.
The Mystery, with seven men on board, left this quayside in 1 854.
Over 1 00 days later they reached Oz.
No fishing boat had ever made such a trip.
Their incredible achievement was a triumph of hope over experience.
They rode their luck in the roughest seas, gambling on a golden future.
SlNGERS: We're bound for South Australia The men left behind wives, children, friends, unsure whether they'd ever see their loved ones again.
Two of the men who made that momentous decision were Philip Curnow Mathews and William Badcock.
No photos of their five crew mates survive.
For years, their story has lain hidden.
Now l want to discover why the men risked everything on that incredible voyage to Australia in the small fishing boat Mystery.
l'm meeting the captain's great-great-great nephew, Douglas Williams.
Hello, Douglas.
As l understand it, back in the 1 850s you could buy for £20 a steerage class ticket all the way to Australia one way.
Why didn't they just do that and travel out there on an emigrant ship? The whole thing was based on an adventure which took off and came out of their control.
They certainly saved a fair bit of money by going that way.
That fact that they had a means of earning their livelihood with the Mystery when they arrived there, those were the two big factors.
This was a new life and a new deal, and they thought they'd have part of it.
Do you think they understood the risk? l don't think they understood the risk.
l don't suppose any of them had been further than the North Sea and around the Cornish southwest coast.
But they had a first-class navigator in Captain Richard Nicholls, who was experienced around the world in cargo ships, and they recognised that, and they had an absolute trust in him.
NlCK: Captain Nicholls'log details a great unsung feat of British seamanship, beginning on November 1 8th, 1 854, leaving Newlyn.
Philip Mathews, William Badcock and their crew mates had barely sailed beyond the sight of land before.
Now, off the tip of Africa, they braved gales, as they pressed on to Melbourne.
Of all the British vessels to make it to Australia, the Mystery, the smallest and pluckiest of all, would never see home shores again.
The Mystery didn't come back to Newlyn, but l've come along the coast to Plymouth.
Here, the spirit of Mystery lives on.
This is an exact replica of the boat in which Captain Nicholls and his six crew set sail.
Bringing her back to life was the dream of Cornishman and legendary sailor, Pete Goss.
l can't believe that l'm going out to sea in this boat.
lt's an amazing story.
We started with a chainsaw, looking for fallen oak trees to make the frames, to build the boat.
NlCK: Fashioning the Cornish oak into a sea-going craft was a ten-month labour of love to honour the achievement of the original crew.
Really, what this is about is celebrating, you know, 1 854, those seven amazing men who really through hardship, but l think a bit of romance, they wanted an adventure themselves, sailed her to Australia, which is staggering, really.
NlCK: For Pete, there was only one way to appreciate fully Mystery's epic voyage down under, to try it himself.
Later l'll be discovering how they battled raging seasjust like the original crew.
And what became of those Cornishmen who reached Australia 1 50 years ago? Newlyn isjust one of many harbours that have waved off bold explorers.
But these safe havens are home to two-way traffic.
For every boat that leaves, one is returning richer for the journey.
Like down on the south coast at Portsmouth.
The harbour here is familiar with the comings and goings of large ships, but they aren't only built for pleasure.
This is the historic home of the Royal Navy, where warships set off to make their mark on the world.
What's less well known is how the Navy's harbours were gateways for the wider world to make an indelible mark on the British people, as Tessa Dunlop's here to explore.
TESSA: The Royal Navy's known as the senior service, proud to display its centuries-old seafaring history.
But these days there's one naval tradition that remains largely hidden from public view, beneath sailors' uniforms.
(Whirring) The tattoo.
Today, some five million Britons see ink on their skin as a fashion statement.
But how did the Navy's sailors start this trend for tattooing? lt all began in far-flung harbours.
As you sail across the sea All my love is there beside you TESSA: l've made a shorterjourney myself, to the naval dockyard at Chatham.
Honolulu or Siam TESSA: Serving sailors can be a secretive bunch, so l'm here to meet veterans on a Second World War vintage destroyer, old salts who can talk tattoos.
As l call across the sea Come home to me TESSA: Radar operator Nobby Clarke wasjust 1 5 when he signed up on the notoriously tough training ship HMS Ganges.
l was a boy seaman, the lowest form of animal life in the Royal Navy.
At Ganges, if you'd had a tattoo there, you could get six cuts across your rear end, which hurt, for having a tattoo.
- What, the cane? - Yes.
After Ganges, young Nobby Clarke was ready to cut loose.
- What is that? - Well, pass.
lt's a horse shoe with a robin inside it, which he had red on him once, and it had Mum and Dad underneath.
This was done with a bamboo cane and ink in Bombay.
- So the old-fashioned slow way? - Yes, and it hurts.
l bet it hurt.
As you sail across the sea The men squeezed into ships like HMS Cavalier and saw tattooing as a rite of passage and a celebration of tradition.
Engineer David Shardlow chose body art that a sailor from Nelson's navy would recognise.
Two little birds, swallows.
These, actually, are a nautical theme, aren't they? - Yes.
- What do they symbolise? You're supposed to be fast with your hands.
Right, so when you're doing your thing with all the gauges and the wheels, you're meant to be working quickly.
ln Capri or Amsterdam Tattoos also tapped into a sailor's softer side, as deckhand Terry Willis can testify.
To the harbour of my heart l will send my love to guide you TESSA: Can l have a little look? TERRY: The galleon.
- That's a ship there, is it? - Yeah.
And we're homeward bound to Pauline.
- To Pauline? - Yes.
- ls that the wife? - No, it's the ex-wife.
The hidden history of naval tattoos might have stayed overseas, but sailors coming home to the harbours of 1 8th-century Britain brought their body art with them.
When Captain Cook returned to England from southern seas, his sailors showed off the skin designs they'd first seen on Polynesians.
Tattoo historian Paul Sayce is showing me how it was done.
- This looks scary.
Where's this from? - That's a Samoan handsaw.
lt's tapped into the skin.
And that's why the name of tattooing in Polynesia is called ''tatow''.
Because the Polynesian word for ''tapping'' is ''tatow''.
And so they're actually cutting and hitting the skin at the same time? Dip it in the ink, put it on the skin, and then they tap it with, like a little piece of wood, like a mallet, and it goes along like that as they're tapping.
That must really hurt.
lt must bruise as well as cut.
lt's terrible.
You get bruising about six to eight inches either side.
This is a Japanese handsaw, but it's very similar to what we would have used, and it would have been about four or five inches long with the needles tied on, and you would have just poked it in.
What, and the ink then pours down into the holes? Yeah, well, you dip it in the ink and then you poke it in.
Painful certainly, but while tattoos were rare outside the Navy, in the mid-1 9th century they also became a sought-after status symbol.
Surprisingly, tattooing even got the royal seal of approval.
During his madcap youth, Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward Vll, visited the Holy Land where he had a Jerusalem cross tattooed on his arm.
Tattoo parlours started to spring up outside our harbours, as high society followed the future monarch's lead.
ln 1 879, the New York Times observed, ''ln England it is regarded as customary and proper to tattoo the youthful feminine leg.
'' By the early 20th century, mechanisation was making inky skin a mass-market commodity.
And this is one of the first mechanised tattoo machines, is it? Yeah, it is, it's one of the first machines and it's still the same as we know it today.
lnside there there's two coils and a hammer, and it goes up and down when the power goes on and off.
The needles go through here.
You dip it in the ink and you go round the skin like that.
And, of course, when the ''more commoner sort of people,'' started getting it done, your high society stopped getting it done, cos as is anything else, anything gets popular, the rich don't want it.
TESSA: Body art swings in and out of fashion, but it's always at home in the Navy's harbours.
Sailor Stop your roaming There used to be an old song which says you're not a sailor till a sailor's tattooed, and, of course, silly boys like me had a tattoo.
- Wouldn't do it again, but TESSA: lt's interesting.
- None of you would do it again.
- No.
We've grown wiser as we get older.
l like your tattoos.
ln fact, who does have the biggest tattoo? Nobby, l think, on his chest.
lt's enormous.
lt's a sailing ship.
l thought it With a cloud.
l see it now.
And birds.
- Yes? - Yes.
- Where was that from? lndia? - No, Singapore.
Singapore.
l think a postcard home would have probably been a better investment.
NlCK: lt isn't just tattoos that the Navy keeps covered up.
Once it strikes out from harbour, the senior service fights its battles in secret.
They show off their ships in exercises, but the grim business of war takes place in far-flung foreign waters.
That is, of course, unless you go to Scarborough.
Those in the know go beyond the sea walls of the quayside to a hidden little harbour that sees explosive action in the holiday months.
Every summer, we wage war here in Scarborough.
NlCK: ln the crazy days of summer, the crowds wait for war to break out.
Meanwhile, the corner of the council boating pond is transformed into an impromptu naval base.
ln top secret, warships are made ready for battle.
lt looks like miniature boats.
The lid comes off and a council employee .
.
climbs inside, and the lid's put back on and there you have your dreadnought.
- There you go.
Good luck.
- Thank you.
NlCK: For 80 years, Scarborough has staged the summer war from a little harbour in Peasholm Park, a grand tradition familiar to friend of the park Christine Mark.
CHRlSTlNE: The naval battle started in the 1 920s.
They started to celebrate World War l sea battles, and that was fine, but then World War ll came along, and after that they decided that it would be a really good idea to celebrate the first battle, the first major sea battle of World War ll, which was the Battle of the River Plate.
NlCK: At the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of South America, the German heavy cruiser Graf Spee suffered a humiliating defeat to the Royal Navy.
A propaganda victory that Scarborough has refought for years.
lt was pretty jingoistic, and that was fine for the time.
NlCK: Nowadays, the conflict is more politically correct.
Don't mention the war, or the Germans.
So now we have the Allies and the enemy.
l'm the enemy.
l've been doing this now about 1 4 years, on and off.
Never won a battle yet.
Do 30 a year and lose every one.
Sailing NlCK: Scarborough Council's naval commanders batten down the hatches.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Scarborough's unique holiday attraction, the Naval Warfare, our sea battle in miniature.
l'm just waiting to see if the submarines appear.
NlCK: Lurking in the lake, an enemy sub launches a sneak attack.
Aimed at HMS British Pride.
ANNOUNCER: The magazine could go any Oh, it has, it has.
Oh, dear.
Oh, dear.
Oh, dear.
But she's spotted an attack by bombers from the Ark Royal.
NlCK: The dive bombers are a hit with the crowd.
When they work.
ANNOUNCER: Oh, we've got one! lnside the Jervis Bay, her skipper presses home the attack.
ANNOUNCER: Oh, what a mess! Don't forget, she's not really a fighting ship, but isn't she doing wonderfully well there? That's a direct hit on the conning tower.
NlCK: With the submarine neutralised, the Allies can finally attack the enemy harbour.
- Oh, look.
The top's coming out now.
- The top's coming off.
So that was it, then.
Half an hour and the Allies won again.
- Yes, as usual.
- Quelle surprise.
NlCK: Here on the Yorkshire coast, they relive battles from distant seas that forged the fighting spirit of naval seamen.
But our shores also shape the character of sailors closer to home, like here, in Cornwall.
This craggy coastline is sculpted by a sea that crashes against granite and builds boatmen of steely resolve.
Historically, each little harbour was connected to its neighbour by the sea, not the land.
The boats that used to chase the mackerel rarely strayed far from the coast, except for one remarkable mackerel boat, the Mystery.
Her seven crew sailed in 1 854 from Newlyn.
lt was a voyage that took them out through the Bay of Biscay, down the coast of West Africa, past Cape Town and on to Melbourne.
A 1 2,000-mile gamble on riches in gold-rush Australia.
When those Cornishmen set sail in 1 854, some of them had never been out of sight of land before.
l'm on an exact replica of their ship, Spirit of Mystery, to relive a great unsung feat of British seamanship.
To appreciate their astonishing achievement, Cornish sailor Pete Goss faced again every crashing wave from the original crew's trip.
Pete built his boat from the plans of an 1 850s lugger, correct in every detail.
l can't help noticing, Pete, that you haven't got any winches or mechanical aids to help you get these huge spars up the mast.
No, this is as they would have sailed, so it's a handful of blocks, a bucket, a rope, needle and thread, go anywhere in the world.
NlCK: Battling the wind, l get a feeling ofjust how tough it was for the crew aboard the Mystery in 1 854.
- There must be a knack to this.
- lt'll come.
You'll be running around by the end of the day.
- Pull out and down.
- That's it.
PETE: Ready? That'll do, yeah.
OK.
Sails hoisted, the Cornishmen faced over 1 00 days in open seas, with the same fearsome horizons.
Up here on the bow, Pete, looking back, l'm actually a little bit shocked at how small this boat is.
lt is a tiny, tiny boat to sail to Australia in.
PETE: The further away you get from land, the smaller it becomes.
And down in the Southern Ocean, there is a sense of vulnerability.
You're just out there and you hope for the best and deal with what comes along.
NlCK: Pete's crew did have a few home comforts their intrepid counterparts couldn't have dreamt of.
Pete, this is incredibly cosy down here, but in the original Mystery, this was a fish hold, right? Yes, well, this area here, our sort of cabin top, would have been a fish hold.
But we know that they decked that over and we know they put bunks and accommodation down below.
Are these working oil lamps? ls this how you lit the cabin down here? PETE: Yeah, we had oil lamps.
We used a sextant to navigate.
The objective was to shine a spotlight on their voyage and get to Melbourne with a real sense of their achievement.
NlCK: Philip Curnow Mathews was one of those who made it to Australia, and now one of his precious possessions has come home to Cornwall.
- This is his littlepersonal compass.
- My goodness.
How extraordinary.
Do you think that was sort of like a lucky charm that he had with him on the voyage? - lt's very beautiful, isn't it? PETE: l like to think it was.
l kind of see that tucked in his waistcoat.
NlCK: Mathews and his five crew mates put their life in the hands of the skipper, Richard Nicholls, who survives in the writings of his log.
And l love this bit.
''Our gallant little vessel riding beautifully and not shipping any water whatever.
'' And your life is contained on this little Cornish walnut.
NlCK: Captain Richard Nicholls was a man of few words, but they sum up the extraordinary nature of the voyage.
MAN: December 6th, 1 854.
Several flying fish came on board during the night.
Crew overhauling rigging and cleaning mast, airing nets and restoring hold.
NlCK: Captain Nicholls refers to his crew simply as ''the people''.
When the boat was becalmed, he'd exercise them with the fisherman's walk, six paces up and down the deck endlessly.
After 50 days at sea, the Mystery stopped over at the tip of South Africa.
Nicholls noted the excitement.
MAN: There were a great many visitors on board, the Mystery being the smallest vessel ever from England.
NlCK: But departing Africa, excitement soon turned to terror in turbulent southern seas.
PETE: The Southern Ocean's the big focus.
That's the big one.
You step into that, and probably every five days on average we'd have a big gale come through.
NlCK: Walls of water pounded their tiny boat.
Pete's crew were fighting for their lives, just like the original men of the Mystery 1 50 years before, as the captain's log records.
MAN: 5th March, 1 855.
A complete hurricane, mountains of sea.
NlCK: Pete only captured the start of this storm on his little camera.
Hailstones rattled down.
Then their world turned upside down.
PETE: Just saw this great big sheer wall of water and shouted.
And then it's like a car crash, you only remember bits, and l remember it went all dark, getting knocked around in the hatchway.
And then it felt like standing in a storm drain with water pouring in and pushing up against it.
Andy was in the starboard bunk, and he woke up and grabbed the boat and swung over and realised he was sat on the ceiling.
So we'd got knocked upside down.
NlCK: Miraculously, the boat righted itself.
But deckhand Mark suffered a badly broken leg.
l'm sure l heard it, like a rifle crack.
But my foot was tucked underneath the bench and my foot caught on the post and that's what caused it to break.
NlCK: ln Melbourne harbour, a hero's welcome greeted the Spirit of Mystery.
(Cheering) When the original Mystery reached Melbourne in 1 855, she was the smallest craft ever to complete the journey.
But her seven-man crew sold Mystery to start new lives.
Philip Curnow Mathews married and became a land surveyor.
He is buried in Melbourne.
Captain Nicholls eventually returned to Cornwall, only to be killed by a horse-drawn carriage in 1 868.
Who says worse things happen at sea? After a spell in Australia, William Badcock and three shipmates also came home to Newlyn harbour.
Perhaps the lure of Cornwall wasjust too strong.
But maybe what had really driven them on wasn't the desire for a new life in Australia but the spirit of adventure.
Sailors love striking out towards new harbours.
Many head for the stunning inland sea at Strangford Lough on the shore of Northern lreland.
The lrish coast is studded with safe havens for shipping, around which great cities have sprung up.
Creating a new settlement by a harbour seems an obvious choice.
But then you head towards Portrush.
ln the Middle Ages, this was a violent coastline.
Castle strongholds brooded on inaccessible cliffs because harbours were open to attack from the sea.
So 400 years ago, when a Scottish lord came to settle the land here, he turned his back on the natural harbour at Portrush.
A decision that would prove disastrous, as Mark is about to discover.
MARK: ln 1 608, this harbour was completely undeveloped.
But the Scottish clan who claimed this land chose to build their settlement not here at Portrush but here at Dunluce Castle.
The castle isjust three miles up the coast from Portrush.
Back in 1 608, with its walls intact, it seemed to offer security.
But times were changing.
The decision to settle here at the castle, rather than at the port over there, was a matter of life and death for the new town.
Those green fields our clue as to what eventually happened.
Just beneath the grass, archaeologists have unearthed the foundations of homes lost for over 350 years, an lrish Pompeii.
l'm meeting Colin Breen from the University of Ulster.
His team are excavating a village built for Scots brought here from over the sea.
This is a plantation, so this is an attempt to bring foreigners to settle Ulster.
Yeah, it's a very complex period in Ulster's history.
What we're essentially doing is coming out of a period of nine years of war and conflict, where the rebellious lrish rose up against the English administration.
And at the end of that period the English Crown decides that the only way to pacify the Ulster landscape is to bring settlers in from England and from Scotland to civilise lreland, to civilise Ulster.
- The wild lrish.
- The wild lrish, as they're often referred to.
And this particular town is established by Randal MacDonnell from 1 608 through to about 1 61 1 .
MARK: Founded by Randal MacDonnell, the new town was taken over by his son in 1 636.
But by then, things were going disastrously wrong for their new settlement sited next to Dunluce Castle.
Now only mysterious mounds remain.
Why was the town lost to history when the Scottish clan MacDonnell built it to last? lt's an amazing thing.
The town itself is really quite elaborate.
What we're looking at is a central space within that town.
This paving surface here extends up as far as that farm building, which was a 1 623 courthouse.
lt would have run right down to the castle itself.
And then there would have been rows of houses lining either side of this central place within the town.
MARK: So this isn't just a small town.
This is a major investment.
Very much so.
MARK: With no proper harbour, the new town relied on trading vessels barely changed since Viking times.
The ships shallow bottoms meant they could be pulled up easily onto the beach.
COLlN: You could drag them up here on West Strand and East Strand, just outside Portrush, but by the time they hit the 1 7th century, they literally weren't equipped to deal with the new globalised economy which was developing at this time.
What you see is a fundamental shift from local trading, local production, into the trading and bulk commodities with much larger vessels.
MARK: These new larger cargo ships needed something that Randal MacDonnell's Ulster new town didn't have.
A harbour.
By the time he realised he needed one, Randal MacDonnell had given away the only natural harbour on this coast.
Those living by the castle watched the big ships sail past.
Bypassed by traders, the new town, just 30 years old, was already dying.
The dig reveals how the money ran out.
Few coins are found from the 1 630s onwards.
Around that time, this merchant's house was subdivided, a small room created on the left to house pigs alongside a once prosperous family.
ln the new era of commercial sea trade, they just couldn't compete.
When Randal MacDonnell builds this town in the early part of the 1 7th century, he makes a fundamental mistake.
He builds it on the edge of a very steep cliff, in excess of 80 metres high, looking out over the North Atlantic.
And there simply is no room to be able to build a harbour in this particular location.
Randal himself was not prepared to let go of his ancestral castle, his ancestral home, and he wasn't in that mind to move away from the medieval period into the new globalised world.
- They just got left behind.
- Very much so.
The town's Scottish settlers turned their back on the sea because the castle seemed more secure.
But they were wrong.
Longstanding resentment towards settlers from Scotland and England reached a head when the native lrish rose up against the incomers.
The attack wasn't from the sea but from within.
ln 1 641 during the lrish Rebellion the town was attacked, and it was essentially burnt to the ground overnight and abandoned.
So we've just got these cobbles.
We're standing where they stood.
Yeah, if we removed all of the grass from beneath this whole landscape, the perfectly intact foundations of an early 1 7th-century town survive.
What a tantalising thought of what might lie under all these fields.
After the uprising, this site was left to go to seed.
Castles were the past.
The future depended on gateways to the sea.
NlCK: Harbours were the beating heart of a modern Britain built on global trade.
The sea is still our life blood.
lt carries 95% by volume of everything we import.
And around one third of our food arrives by ship.
But while sea trade sustains our bodies, it can also change our minds.
The fortunes of a coastal town ebb and flow with the traffic through its harbour.
But it's not just goods that come and go.
Sometimes the export isn't a commodity, it's an idea.
An idea that changed the world took life here in Birkenhead harbour.
Birkenhead sits in the shade of its bigger neighbour, Liverpool, across the Mersey.
Around 200 years ago, Liverpool docks were booming.
So hard-headed businessmen with plans for a new harbour looked to Birkenhead.
Little did they know they were laying the foundations for a revolution in the world of leisure.
Ruth Goodman is digging deeper.
RUTH: ln the 1 800s Birkenhead was taking shape, as merchants in these parts showed off their wealth in stone.
The grand homes of 1 9th-century Birkenhead rivalled their counterparts in London.
Thanks to the wealth that was pouring into this Merseyside port, Birkenhead was booming because it was on the coast.
lt's fair to say that the harbour's seen better days, but Glynn Parry knows its hidden history.
There's not much here now, but it would have been extremely busy, wouldn't it? lt would have been, with ships coming in, going out all the time.
- And it was a huge number of people.
- Tremendous number of people.
ln the period of about 20 years, the population had gone from somewhere in the region of 1 20 to about 1 2,000.
They're coming in from all over the Northwest.
People were still looking for work but they were coming in off the farms and things, because the rates of pay were greater.
The new harbour pulled in an army of new workers fresh from green fields.
Now, though, they were cramped together in regimented rows.
COLlN: You're talking about back-to-back houses, where there was no sanitation, no ventilation.
RUTH: Home is hardly sweet home that you want to come home to.
COLlN: lt's not somewhere to go for peace and quiet.
RUTH: The bosses were living in style.
But the merchants had good reason to worry about the living conditions of their employees and their children.
Within living memory, the workers of Manchester had demonstrated for social reform.
1 8 died in the Peterloo Massacre, when cavalry charged them with drawn sabres.
Could similar social unrest be brewing in the drinking dens of Birkenhead? Was there a genuine possibility of everything exploding in revolution? People would resent those who seemed to be better off, those in control.
There could well have been a major revolution.
They'd had one in France.
Why not one in Britain? To prise workers out of the ale houses, the great and good of Birkenhead Council came up with a novel idea.
Use public money to create a grand, green space.
Park life was born.
ln 1 847, the first public-funded municipal park opened its imposing gates.
Just imagine 1 60 years ago, if you were some young kid in from the fields or the cowsheds, trying to make a living in the new industrial north.
This must have been quite intimidating, l think, and also just that little bit exciting.
There was nowhere like this on earth.
lt was laid out by designer Joseph Paxton, who'd go on to create the Crystal Palace in London.
This space was social networking 1 9th-century-style.
That's what's so special about this park.
lt's a time machine that takes us back to the birth of modern urban Britain.
lf only we can learn to see it with old eyes.
Back then everything ran to a plan.
The park taught people to play nicely together and conform to polite society.
l've got a copy of the bylaws here for the park.
lt's a rather formidable document.
They're quite interesting, look.
No carpet bearing.
No fires.
No pitching tents.
No leaving piles of building materials all over the place.
No preaching.
But visitors did spread the word.
Public parks popped up all over Britain, and beyond.
Where Birkenhead led, the world followed.
The designer of New York's Central Park, Frederick Olmsted, was inspired by his own visit to Merseyside in 1 850.
And Birkenhead's haven of tranquillity remains Britain's only Grade l listed municipal park.
lt's funny to think that when these docks were built, it was all about importing wealth into the local area.
But the public parks movement, born here in Birkenhead because of the new docks, was exported to the rest of the world.
NlCK: As you leave the twin harbours of Merseyside heading north, green and yellow open spaces provide natural delights, during the day and the night.
l saw the harbour lights They only told me we were parting Blackpool lights up the coast every September.
lt's a bright idea that keeps the summer season burning longer.
But, then, this is an ingenious stretch of shore, as they know at Barrow-in-Furness.
This harbour is the site where our nuclear subs take shape.
But there's another secret here almost everyone's forgotten, when boffins of Barrow were building a remarkable ship.
An airship.
An uplifting tale Dick can't resist.
ln 1 91 1 , His Majesty's Airship No 1 was beginning to take shape in Cavendish docks.
Here, have a look at this.
This is the stern of the airship sticking out of massive shed that was constructed to protect this weapon of war.
l want to know what became of Britain's airships and why this top-secret project was started on this part of the coast.
This was the man that Barrow was taking on, the undisputed king of the air, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin.
His first zeppelin rose to the skies in 1 900.
Three years before the Wright brothers managed powered flight.
And the new threat posed by zeppelins was alarming.
Britain's skies were wide open.
Suddenly we were in an aerial arms race with Germany.
ln 1 909, the Admiralty set shipbuilders at Barrow the challenge of designing Britain's own zeppelin-style airship.
To see how our airship took shape in this harbour, l've come to Cavendish dock with local historian Graham Cubbin, to hunt for evidence of the top-secret project.
Graham, look at this.
lt looks huge.
Where was it? This is the airship shed built on Cavendish dock, and behind us here you can see the remnants of the airship shed.
You can see the remains of the foundations.
DlCK: Those posts go for a very long way.
What length are we talking about, the shed and airship? The shed itself was over 600 feet long and over 50 foot wide.
The airship was 51 2 feet long, and when it was launched in 1 91 1 it was the biggest airship in the world, far bigger than any of the zeppelins that had been built.
Britain's first rigid airship floated on water to make it easier to manoeuvre, an idea copied from the Germans.
But our engineers made a critical mistake constructing the shed to house their creation.
GRAHAM: Zeppelin's airship shed was a floating shed, and that enabled them to rotate the whole shed into the wind.
But Vickers built theirs over rigid foundations, it couldn't turn, so any airship coming out of this shed would be subject to strong winds.
DlCK: Unfortunately it was a blustery day on 24th September 1 91 1, as His Majesty's Airship No 1 was made ready for manoeuvres.
So we're here one side of the docks, the shed would have been over there, and the airship would have just been brought out, pulled out, towed out.
Yeah, it was very carefully planned.
Yes, it was towed out using small boats and hawses, so it was actually floating very lightly on the water and could be manoeuvred to a mooring post in the centre of the dock.
DlCK: No sooner was she free of the shed than disaster struck.
Seldom does a picture sum up a nation's humiliation so completely.
OK, Graham, what went wrong? GRAHAM: There was a gust of wind, the airship rolled slightly, and, as it was described at the time, there was a sound like thousands of stones being tossed through acres of glasshouses.
(Smashing) The stern-most part of the airship started to rise into the air.
Luckily the crew managed to jump into the dock.
No injuries were sustained, but the airship was irreparably damaged.
lt was a catastrophic failure.
This crunching setback convinced the traditionally-minded top brass of the Navy that Barrow's secret project wasjust an ill-conceived aerial adventure.
Admiral Sturdee, the head of the inquiry into Britain's airship disaster, is reported to have said the project was the ''work of an idiot''.
Such was the humiliation that the airship project in this harbour was halted.
What a mess.
But the zeppelin soared on.
With the First World War looming, like it or not, we were in a critical air race.
So the Admiralty had to swallow their pride and set their sights on the skies again.
To succeed, we had to understand every detail of the zeppelin's design.
To get an airship off the ground, you have to fill it with a gas that is lighter than the air.
They used hydrogen, and they used lots of it.
But surprisingly an airship's outer skin isn't gas-tight at all.
The rigid frame and its canvas coating were there to protect the fragile gas-tight bags held inside.
Here, the massive gas bags of the zeppelin hang limp inside the frame, waiting to be inflated.
But what were they made of? Now it's child's play to produce a bag that can hold a gas for ages.
But 1 00 years ago, they didn't have materials like this.
So what did they do? Well, to get a futuristic airship to float, they had to revert to techniques that were ancient.
Amazingly, the gas bags inside the most advanced zeppelins started their lives insidea cow.
Open up the beast and there's a part of its intestines known as the caecum.
That's what held the hydrogen inside the zeppelins.
lt seems incredible, but cow guts were the secret ingredients that meant that airships could float in the sky.
- Giles, good to see you.
- Hello.
- How you doing? Are we ready for this? - l think so, yes.
We'll have a go.
You're going to lead me through here.
DlCK: Airship expert Giles Camplin knows the history, but he's never handled the real guts of a zeppelin before.
We've got some straight from the abattoir.
- Good Lord.
- ls that what you expected? GlLES: This is the raw material.
- That's not very pleasant.
GlLES: lt's horrible.
lt's disgusting.
But that, you can see there, is the membrane, sort of membranes we're looking for.
And that is gas-holding.
That holds hydrogen.
When they dry it and process it, it ends uplike this.
You see, this is dry.
ln the airships they kept it moist and flexible.
lt's a natural membrane that's gas-tight.
DlCK: So, can we make our own mini airship by filling this membrane with helium? DlCK: l've done some very odd things in my time (Helium hisses) Right (Both laugh) - This is disgusting.
- lt is.
- But the membrane is very impressive.
- lt's showing that it's gas-tight.
- All this fat's got to be scraped off.
- All that's got to be scraped off.
And then the actual membrane bit, the very thin bit here, would have been cut to make a flat square sheet, and then you could laminate the sheets together.
- And stick them together.
- And then you put multiple layers in.
Up to seven layers thick.
You needed up to 350,000.
Some of the big ships, they had a million of these to make one airship.
What an investment in effort and time and cows.
l think this is practically ready to fly.
To get the zeppelins out of their sheds, millions of German cows gave up their guts.
Across Germany, farmers were mobilised.
They had to surrender the inside of their animals for the war effort.
But in Britain, airship production was still playing catch-up.
We struggled to gather the vast amount of cow guts required.
Well, we had a problem, especially in the First World War, and we were getting them from America.
They'd be coming into ports like Liverpool.
They came in barrels, salted.
They salted them to preserve them, because that's the best way of doing it.
And then they were soaked in solutions of glycerine and water, and then teams of women were processing them, scraping the fat off, getting them ready and layering them up to make these gas cells.
The smell must have been appalling.
Must have been horrendous conditions, but we had to catch up with the Germans.
The zeppelins were coming over and bombing, so that's what they had to do to make these amazing flying machines.
By the First World War, we were still struggling to produce effective airships.
Meanwhile, the east coast, the Midlands and London suffered the terror of zeppelin attacks.
Bombing raids killed more than 500 people across Britain.
Only after the war, when the R80 came into service, did we finally have a craft to match Germany's finest.
So much effort and all in vain.
Planes would eventually blow military airships from the skies.
The airborne adventure we started in this harbour never really did take off.
But there's something about airships that still seems futuristic, an alternative future, the stuff of science fiction, kept in the air by cow guts.
NlCK: A wealth of hidden history lies in store for those who explore our harbours.
Tales of enterprise, triumph and trade tell how Britain was born.
For me, the coast is most alive when you can see it at work, and harbours are where you can see that happening, where land and sea and people all come together, and where adventures are born.